The present invention relates generally to meat processing methods and apparatus. The food industry has for many years requested suppliers to deliver portions of meat of selected size and weight. Particularly, restaurants and other food services are interested in portion control of meat in order to provide a consistent portion of meat to customers which permits a degree of quality control as well as economy.
In most instances, such control of meat portions has required manual cutting, sizing and weighing to deliver a portion having the selected configuration and weight. With the advent of the large fast food chains and the introduction of pieces of poultry, namely chicken, sold in a variety of sizes and shapes, a high demand for portion control has evolved over the last decade or so. Presently, this demand of closely controlled portions of chicken breast has required the time consuming, relatively high cost manual process which is, by its very nature, less exact and consistent than desired. It also depends to an undesirable degree on the experience, skill and care of the manual cutters to reduce the amount of scrap portions created which must be sold at much lower prices to other end users.
Prior to the present invention, the need for an automated apparatus capable of reliably providing a closely controlled portion of meat, and particularly poultry breast, having a selected size and weight has been unfulfilled by those skilled in the art. Therefore the huge demand for such portion controlled products has been filled by the manual method over the past many years such products have been produced for the industry.